Pride Comes to Los Santos in This New ‘Grand Theft Auto V’ Mod

Courtesy of some creative modders, GTA players can now host their own parade.

Grand Theft Auto V's detailed interpretation of Los Angeles, Los Santos, is a ringer for the real-world City of Angels in many ways. From the Playboy Mansion to the Santa Monica Pier, via the Watts Towers and the Whisky a Go Go, a host of tourist hotspots made the move from holiday snaps to in-game locations, albeit with a few name changes along the way. But it's always missed an important annual celebration that takes place among the hilly streets of West Hollywood: one of the world's longest-running pride celebrations.

The first-ever LA Pride Parade happened in the summer of 1970, and it's been a regular fixture in West Hollywood since becoming a more formalized, professionally run operation in 2000, officially branded as LA! Pride: The TLGB Celebration. America's pride marches proved contagious, and similar events now happen across the world. Where I live, in Brighton, we have a massive party in Preston Park every August, after a riotously loud community parade through the city. It's the biggest event of its kind in the UK, and over in Stockholm, Scandinavia's largest celebration of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer people in the region goes down every year, with 600,000 people participating in the Swedish capital's pride activities of 2015.

And it's via Stockholm that Grand Theft Auto V now has its own pride parade. A group of the game's fans got together at Swedish advertising agency Garbergs to work beside Stockholm Pride on a new (unofficial) mod for the game. JulioNiB, scripter of previous GTA V mods like Iron Man and Watch Dogs—yes, there's a Watch Dogs mod for the game—is on the team, likewise the 8 bit Bastard collective, who cut the trailer below using the Rockstar Editor.

The mod is out now (get it here), for anyone wanting to bring a splash of color to the gray tarmac of Vinewood. Christian Valtersson, the president of Stockholm Pride, has said of the project: "The message of love and equality is always needed, and we are happy that players get to host their own Los Santos Pride Parade. It has been wonderful to get to cooperate with such creative and talented people as the ones who made this idea into reality."

The Los Santos Pride project is also intended to honor to the victims of the mass shooting at Orlando's LGBTQ club, Pulse, last month. Says Valtersson: "We've made the parade indestructible. Not to moralize, but rather to show that love will always triumph over hate."